As we celebrate SEA MONKEY DAY (May 16th, 2017), we will delve into the brilliant marketing ploy that was originally named ‘INSTANT LIFE’. Fun Fact: Sea Monkeys, as they were sold in stores in the mid to late 60’s, did not actually exist in nature. They were actually Brine Shrimp.

Sea Monkeys were created in a lab by a guy named Harold von Braunhut. He actually invented them to jump on another mass-marketed creature bandwagon. The hugely popular ant farms, developed and sold by Milton Levine in 1956, were so popular that people were searching far and wide for another type of creature to market. Along comes Harold.

Artemia NYOS (New York Ocean Science), as they are actually named, is an artificial breed of brine shrimp that will hibernate when dried out. “PERFECT!” Thought Harold, “I’ll just dry these critters out and package them!”

He hired an illustrator named Joe Orlando to draw cartoons. “Hey Joe, can you make drawings of these tiny things? You know make them look like a little naked family!” Asked Harold in my imagination.”OH! and make the mother BLONDE, yeah that’s right!”

The media plan was robust for its time, with 3.2 million pages/year in comic books.

Originally called “instant life”, because all you had to do to wake these buggers up by ‘just adding water’, the public actually renamed them ‘Sea-Monkeys’ The original crowdsourced naming!